Grocery Store Hears Traffic, Encroachment Concerns

Grocery store develpers got an earful from neighbors Thursday night, hearing complaints about existing traffic issues before the new market is even built, as well as other concerns from residents about seeing their wooded entrance turned into a parking lot. 

More than 100 residents of Woodland Lakes and Braemore filled the council chambers at Goose Creek City Hall to get a for an undeveloped lot on U.S. 52 between the two small neighborhoods.

According to initial plans (included in a PDF underneath the photos at right), the building will house a 34,000-square-foot grocery store on more than four acres of the 15-acre lot. Two more parcels closer to the Braemore entrance are available for future development, but aren't included in the grocery store sale.

A traffic study will be required to determine entrances, but developers expect three: one on 52, and one each on Woodland Lakes Road and Windsor Mill Road.

Vince Inzerillo, a Braemore resident, told KJ developers that they were in the wrong spot.

"You need to take the store three miles up the road," he said. "You don't put a grocery store in the backyard of somebody's house."

City Planning Director Daniel Ben-Yisrael stressed that the city will enforce buffer requirements, but in the end, the city cannot stop the development.

"You have your property rights," he said. "It's our job to balance that with the owner's property rights."

Like most of the undeveloped land along Goose Creek's main roads, the large lot has been zoned for commercial use for more than 30 years, so Mayor Mike Heitzler told the crowd this should not come as a surprise.

But the residents' concerns seemed to weigh less on the particular development and more on existing issues with traffic backing up in their neighborhoods. There's also the looming threat of an abandoned grocery store years in the future — something that has plagued Crowfield Plantation residents for more than five years.

Complete coverage of Crowfield's Plantation Square redevelopment efforts. 

The property is zoned for commercial use, but any development will have to go through the city's Architectural Review Board and will receive a public hearing. City Administrator Dennis Harmon noted earlier this week that the city has been able to find concessions with developers through that process to address citizen concerns.

Woodland Lakes Homeowners Association President Melanie Murray said she moved to the neighborhood less than a year ago, after 25 years in Mount Pleasant, to escape the kind of development she'll now be seeing in front of her neighborhood. "We would like to see that area be a park," she said.

The land north of the Woodland Lakes entrance is part of the city's municipal center site and is zoned for conservation. The city also purchased five lots near the Breamore subdivision in 2007.

But Mayor Heitzler said the City Council isn't interested in the grocery store site right now.

"You can't expect the city to buy up all the properties," he said, noting the high cost of commercial land. "We can't tax you enough."